[1] The development of political science in Hungary has to be interpreted against the background of a totalitarian and post-totalitarian tradition and the democratic transformation of 1989. The totalitarian system annihilated all autonomous social sciences, including Hungarian political science from the pre-communist period. In the 1970s, some social scientists began to conduct political analyses and empirical surveys related to attitudes, legitimacy, and public opinion. The first scholars oriented toward a Western type of political science came from other disciplines, such as philosophy (Csaba Gombár), sociology (Kálmán Kulcsár), law (Péter Schmidt), and public administration (József Halász). Hungarians started to participate in International Political Science Association (IPSA) meetings, and thereafter the idea of Hungary having its own political science discipline was on the agenda. The 1979 Moscow International Political Science Association (IPSA) World Congress was the breakthrough, not only for the Hungarians participating, but also for the legitimacy of political science. From the Moscow conference on, one could hardly deny the legitimacy of political science in Hungary (Szoboszlai, 1982; Farkas-Halay, 1984). So-called "legitimizing" debates at the end of the 1970s, especially after the 1979 World Congress of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) in Moscow, set the stage for the institutionalization of political science in Hungary. Is political science possible and useful, for what, and do we need it? What are its relations to history, law, and political theory? All these questions needed to be discussed within the new frame of political and spiritual opportunities after 1989.
[2] Parallel to the process of liberalization starting in the 1980s and concluding with the democratization of 1989, political science gained more and more access to scientific resources and to public life. Some political scientists, such as Attila Ágh, László Lengyel, László Kéri, Mihály Bihari, Kálmán Kulcsár and Béla Pokol, played an important role in the process of democratization, using their expertise to help new political organizations, advising them or the new government and parties. The mass media often asked political scientists to interpret the new institutional setting for the public. The possibility of publishing on subjects taboo in communist times opened up space to publish archive material, to interpret it, and to discuss problems of the new political system. Most of these discussions were tied to current problems of Hungarian democratization, the new institutions, and their balances and imbalances.
[3] After 1989, international political analysis deliberately separated its development from that of political science, meaning that its practitioners left the Hungarian Political Science Association (HPSA) and established their own organization, and the study of international relations went its own way in teaching and in the later development of publication. However, in the mid-1990s, the challenges of EU accession for research and teaching have shown that this separation can no longer be maintained. The Europeanization process, the analysis of globalization and its effects, and studies of global and international governance are newly integrating the community of the policy-related social sciences.
[4] The main research interests today are party systems, elections, public opinion, voting behavior, institutional change, and civil society, especially NGOs. The specific way the regime changed in Hungary - an institutionalized replacement of the old political elite with a new one - took place without major mass mobilizations; and rapid development toward a Western-type party system and with few triumphs for trade unions directed the focus of political science to constitutionalism, elections, elites, and political parties. There are very few projects oriented toward political protest, strikes, trade unions, and corporatism. The most important foreign policy issues are European integration and NATO partnership, of course. The Laszlo Teleki Foundation and Illyés Fouundation provides separate research funds for research on Hungarian minorities in other countries. Thus, ethnic minorities, self-government, and autonomy are also important areas of research. Basic research on political theory and history is located mainly at the universities. The Institute of Political History, the Institute of the 1956 Revolution, and the 20th and 21st Century Foundations are centers of contemporary history and political science research, and they have publication series based on their research materials.
[5] The Hungarian higher education system has recently accepted political science as a major of its own. No more than 500 diplomas have been issued. This means that political science - like economics and sociology - is still not glutting the Hungarian labor market. Until recently, students with a double major such as law/political science or economics/political science could find jobs quite easily in various areas of higher education, civil service, or politics.
[6] Political science at the beginning of the 21st century in Hungary is on the verge of becoming one of the mass curricula channels of social sciences in higher education, but it has been established in the research and scientific qualification system for a longer time.
[7] Hungarian political science, like the social sciences in general, enjoys much more freedom and autonomy than during the communist period; but it is faced with political and social problems and challenges generated by the transformation. The discipline was born in and through the transformation and, like economics and sociology, does not have any institutionalized past in the Communist system.
[8] In Hungary, the destruction of former structures and experiences of social sciences has been limited; the academy of sciences has maintained its position as a kind of "ministry of science", and government-based higher education still has an almost exclusive monopoly, the only exceptions being the reinstitution of church-based higher education and the establishment of some international or foreign (Western) university programs. How is social science restructured under conditions of free access to international market and of academic freedom? Private or association-based social sciences have their own budget for research and teaching; its privileges of access to internal or international communication and resources are equal to those of government-based institutions. Hungary preserves a continental-European style of the domination of government support and control over research and teaching, but since 1989, NGOs have been developing as a form for education and research. Main private institutions, like the Central European University, are foreign; Péter Pázmány and Károli Gáspár Universities are church-based.
[9] After the defeat of the 1956 revolution and especially after the experiments with economic reforms in 1968, the development of Hungary’s social sciences was ambivalent. Hungary’s communist leadership included "softliner" and "hardliner" groups after 1956; their ideas about science policy were different, too. The "softliners" in particular viewed the social sciences as "tools for social engineering", a type of "social technology", and they tried to establish "pseudo-free zones" where research and teaching without the limitations of the ruling ideology and elite could support party-led modernization. This sector enjoyed government/party resources and political support for applied research for the political elite, but its results did not become part of general scientific communication. The majority of the publications and teaching and research units had no free communication with Western or other free social science communities and produced solely for the "official" market. Another segment was the independent sector: dissidents and critical intellectuals who obtained their education and some training at official universities and then gave up or were forced to give up their official carrier, thus breaking with the limitations of the official social science and political discourse (Csizmadia, 1995).
[10] Two institutes of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Communist Party, the Institute for Party History and the Institute for Social Sciences, were important for the development of political science in Hungary and gained recognition after they were transformed and put under public control after 1989. Archive material of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party and of other leftist parties, interviews, and other documentation allowed for the development of a research institution, the (Politikatörténeti Intézet). It was loosely tied to the newly established Hungarian Socialist Party, which governed the country from 1994-1998. Well-known political scientists like Mihály Bihari, Csaba Gombár, Péter Schmidt, László Lengyel, Béla Pokol, László Bruszt, János Simon, István Hülvely, Zsolt Papp, István Balogh, and József Bayer carried out research related to political science at the Institute of Social Science in the 1970s. This group was also connected to universities and other institutes and formed the core group of the Hungarian Political Science Association (HPSA) before 1989. After 1989, the reorganized institute was established as the Institute of Political Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Magyar Tudomanyos Akademia/MTA - Politikatudományi Intézete).
[11] There was also a "dissident social science discourse" with elements of political analysis, political theory, and philosophical debates. Some intellectuals had professional social science education, defined research interests, and the desire to disseminate their research results in a kind of "alternative education" (Szilágyi, 1999). Though their numbers were limited, they had considerable impact on Hungary’s pseudo-free official social science community as well as on Western social sciences. Before and after 1956, there was a Hungarian "exile social science community" in Western political and other social sciences - for example, Iván Szelényi, Ágnes Heller, Mihály Vajda, Péter Kende, Charles Gáti, Iván Völgyes, Rudolf Tőkés, etc. These people had connections to the dissidents and also an impact on official social and political analysis (Faragó, 1986). Some Hungarian dissidents were relevant for the development of political science, like Miklós Haraszti, Miklós Tamás Gáspár, György Bence, György Konrád, Miklós Szabó, Ágnes Heller, and Ferenc Fehér, among others.
[12] Among the various Western foundations supporting social science development, the joint George Soros/Hungarian Academy of Sciences network (Quigley, 1997; Nóvé, 1999) was especially beneficial; since the mid-1980s, it has provided official and unofficial Hungarian social scientists interested in political research with broader opportunities to participate in Western education and research. The Soros network, today fully developed regionally and globally, began its Eastern European activities in Hungary. It certainly had a great impact on the opening up of the old system and on the early renewal of the social sciences, including of political science. The Soros-HAS programs included fellowships, conference grants, equipment, research costs, and books for the groups of the unofficial and of the official but non-dogmatic scientists and intellectuals. The appearance of the Soros Foundation, combined with the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, was a clear sign of regime change in the 1980s. Its activities in political science have included:
[13] This had a great impact on the political and intellectual transformation in Hungary and the whole region.
[14] A wide range of pre-communist traditions was rediscovered and popularized by the founders of political science in Hungary. There is a debate whether these traditions have anything to say for re-emerging political science of the new millennium in Hungary (Balogh-Bayer, 1999 versus Lánczi, 2001/a).
[15] My own interpretation of the relevance of pre-communist political science and theory, especially of theory in the democracy tradition, is as follows. Hungarian culture and education developed after the Habsburg Empire finished the "reconquista" of state territory from the Ottoman Empire at the end of the 17th century. The Habsburgs consolidated their power against the rebellious Protestant Hungarian elites in the 18th century. During the 19th century, in the process of establishing the national and liberal values of a civil society against Habsburg rule, a current of critical political thought with contributions toward a scholarly political analysis developed. On the other hand, the official state science, "Staatswissenschaft", and cameral science, "Kameralistik", were part of the university curricula for lawyers and administrators, too (Arczt, 1987).
[16] Hungarian contributions to the theory of democracy and civil society came from unofficial, critical political thinkers, forced into inner or outer emigration (Nagy, 1994; Schlett, 1996, 1999) during their lifetimes. Some of them held official teaching positions in Hungary, but they were not part of the official Staatswissenschaft. József Eötvös (1813-1871), an activist of the 1848-49 national and democratic revolution and an émigré in Germany, wrote and published in German against the Habsburgs, and later returned to Hungary (Schlett, 1987; Eötvös, 1981). Oszkár Jászi (1875-1957), an activist in the 1918 republican revolution and later an émigré in the USA until his death, publishing there in English (Jászi, 1989), worked against both the Habsburgs and the nationalism of Hungarian elites and for a civil society. An opponent of Fascism and later of Communism was István Bibó (1911-1979), an activist both in the 1945 national and democratic renewal and in the 1956 revolt against Stalinism, published in English in the 1960s (with the help of the UK political scientists, Bernard Crick and Bibó, 1986) after long prison years in "inner emigration".
[17] There are many parallels in the life stories of these three thinkers, whom I regard as the mainstream tradition of the theory of democracy and civil society in Hungary: All of them were long excluded from the official Hungarian discourses, they played an active role in the higher ranks of politics for awhile, and they had to come to theoretical terms with their defeat in emigration, and this had some fruitful impact on their political theory.
[18] So, we find a Staatswissenschaft tradition irrelevant to the modern social sciences and the theory of democracy; a "nominal" political science; and a "critical" unofficial tradition of critical and innovative political theory, relevant to the theory of democracy and civil society in Hungary. Established and boring political science versus an unofficial, interesting, and critical "dissent" that developed parallel to the former in a rather non-communicative way between 1848 and 1989. The communist period continued these patterns of development that had been established in the previous systems, so the schism between official and unofficial continued, and the new dissenting political science looked back upon the old one. The pre-communist traditions had a symbolic alternative character for generations of dissent and opposition in Hungary that criticized and rejected official Marxism-Leninism. Needless to say, current socio-political orientations determined which earlier Hungarian political thinkers they considered interesting; nationalists, liberals, and socialists had and have their preferences within the range of pre-communist political analysis in Hungary.
[19] One author suggests that the political science that grew from Western Marxism and oppositional discourses has led to a "society versus the state" paradigm, with a latent or manifest plea for the idea of the self-government of civil society (Körösényi, 1996, 1999/a). In his view, this trend is overwhelming in the Hungarian and generally in post-communist political science communities. To counterbalance this "hidden continuation of Marxism" and leftism, he says the new political science must be rooted in the government-oriented study of politics, in analytical policy and the tradition of studying governance. This approach maintains that Marxism and leftism survived the fall of Communism and that the nominal decline in references to the Marxist tradition does not mean a new beginning. It is true that, after 1989, some subjects of the oppositional discourses, like Central Europe, human rights, and civil society, became major foci and topoi of political science discourse and entailed a continuation of the international opposition discourses in a new institutionalized setting. Theories of democracy and civil society, mainly liberal and neo-liberal ones, emerged from these circles of scholars (Kis, 1987; 1997; 2000; Halmai, 1990; 1994), disseminated by the international and especially regional networks of the Soros Foundations and Open Society Institutes. But the same institutions also support sober public policy analyses and government studies (Körösényi, 1999; Stark and Bruszt, 1998; Tóka, 1995; 1999). One may have doubts whether Marxism survived in the political sciences and in the other social sciences after its death in the post-communist region, as hypostased. "Transitology" also focuses on democratization, so it has also been a trend supportive of the dominant civil society paradigm (Bozóki; Körösényi and Schöpflin, 1992; Miszlivetz, 1999; Szoboszlai, 1991, 1992). But a closer look at the transition literature shows that, especially in the beginning, it was highly oriented toward institutions and elites and only later included approaches stressing the role of political culture and civil society.
[20] Among Hungarian émigré political scientists, György Schöpflin (London School of Economics), Iván Völgyes (University of Nebraska, died in an airplane crash in Hungary in 2001, commemorated in Politikatudományi Szemle, Vol. 10, No. 1-2, 5-7), Rudolf Tőkés (University of Connecticut), Andrew Arató (New York City, New School of Social Research), and Andrew C. János (University of California at Berkeley) played especially important roles in organizing research teams and projects on Hungarian transition in a comparative perspective and in helping young scholars to gain fellowships and publication possibilities.
[21] Let’s have an overview of the subjects of these discussions, based on the ten volumes of the academic journal of political science, Politikatudományi Szemle (Political Science Review).
[22] The Hungarian system is a parliamentary one, but in the early 1990s there were tensions between the first president’s drives and the constitutional rules, which were interpreted by the Constitutional Court. The debate brought up interesting comparative materials on the separation of powers and regime types.
[23] The suppressed, "catacomb"-type civil societies of the region were liberated during the transition, but new institutions and rules have developed that exert influence and constraints on them. Dissenters’ civil society utopias are confronted with the post-communist reality of political apathy and alienation in Hungary and elsewhere.
[24] Non-Communist political directions were banned to a common garbage can in the Communist system, but after 1989, a new differentiation, cleavage system, and party system developed and organized in various patterns and profiles; classical Lipset-Rokkan cleavage theory is applied to interpret this new system.
[25] The "Party-State" was almighty and powerful in the communist era; after 1989, the two domains separated, and the power of the state was pressed to reduce, but at the same time the transformation itself, its regulation, and its institutionalization in the economy and in civil society assigned new and great tasks to the state. The preservation of state neutrality makes divergent challenges to the post-communist political realm.
[26] What is the future of politics? Is there any politics in a globalized new world where nation-states diminish and supranational coordination mechanisms emerge?
[27] What are the requirements for pluralist democracy and stability in a new political system where legacies of the past and challenges of the international environment, of economic transformation, and of social tensions test the performance of democratic institutions? Do liberalism and democracy have their own Hungarian roots, or do they share in the international crisis of liberalism?
[28] The general elections repeatedly exhibit the interplay of these factors of political behavior, institutions, and their country-specific features. Political apathy, a process of concentration in the parties, dominant majority elements, and the disproportionality of the electoral system produce the ambivalent consequences of stable governments and party concentration.
[29] The constitution-making debate is unreal in the sense that we do not have a systematic, new post-communist constitution in Hungary, but a complex of piecemeal modifications by Parliament and the Constitutional Court of the old, communist constitution. How should we develop a new one: through expertise, referendum, compromise?
[30] Hungary and the millions of Magyars abroad have a public sensitive to these questions in times when the role of the nation-state is diminishing due to globalization, Europeanization, and regional autonomy. Minority rights protection is still a matter of politics with and against the state.
[31] EU enlargement has implications for the institutions and policy processes of the new Hungarian democracy. What are the requirements? Are there EU patterns in the different areas of politics, polity, and policy? What can we expect accession to result in? Will Hungarian democracy have a second transition after ten years of democratization? And if so, how?
[32] Debate after 1989 focused sharply on pre-communist traditions in Hungary, raising questions like: Do we have any? Are they helpful in establishing or re-establishing a new political science? The main focus of the debate was on the relevance, existence, or rejection of former Hungarian traditions (Balogh-Bayer, 1999; Lánczi, 2001/a). In the mid-1990s, András Körösényi articulated the problem of the re-emergence of a still dominant Marxist-Leftist paradigm (1996; 1999/a). A generally debated thesis was that Western patterns and research were colonializing the social sciences in the post-communist countries (György Csepeli; Antal Örkény and Kim Schepple, 1997). The most recent identity discourse in the Political Science Review 1999-2000 is about political science’s boundaries with journalism, political essays, and analysis writing for the public, which try to define the limits of academic analysis, policy-making, and public debates in a pluralistic political system. The role of the think tanks and of political science in policy making was earlier articulated in the 1998-1999 debate in the Political Science Review; again, the question was the practical efficacy of the science and the limits of its scientific mission. Erzsébet Szalai (2000), the winner of the 2000 Bibó Prize, initiated at the weekly Élet és Irodalom (Life and Literature) another discourse on the lack of critical social science in post-1989 Hungary.
[33] Surveying the wide range of topics of debates, we may state that the basics of the new politics were at the forefront of the debate, which translations of texts by major Western political scientists connected to international and European debates and which reflected Hungarian political and public issues, too.
[34] Political science in Hungary has made few methodological innovations and has little methodological consciousness. Political scientists apply mainly traditional legal, historical methods in case studies, policy and institutional analysis, or philosophical and historical analysis and focus on the field of history of ideas and political philosophy. The more empirically oriented research is done by sociologists and social psychologists applying the methodologies standard in the analysis of political phenomena in the US.
[35] Transition became a major - almost the exclusive - object of study after 1989. Earlier, a very few scholars performed avant-garde work on alternatives of social and political change in Hungary and Eastern Europe, working with foreign, mainly American institutions and scholars. We may mention Elemér Hankiss (1990) and László Bruszt (with Stark, 1998), who later become part of the international transitology discourses. Other young Hungarian scholars - Ákos Róna-Tas, József Böröcz, and Árpád Szakolczai - spent longer periods abroad in graduate or postgraduate studies in the US and could join the transitology discourse at an early stage, mainly as employees of American or other Western universities. The abovementioned scholars, who gained prestige in international networks, introduced some younger scholars to the subject during their research work in Hungary, and other Hungarians cooperated with foreign institutions and scholars, so a second generation of transitologists, including András Bozóki, Zsolt Enyedi, Miklós Sükösd, Béla Greskovits, arose, later to crystallize mainly around the Central European University Political Science department. For the broader group of Hungarian political scientists, it was very important that the American Political Science Association launched some bilateral meetings of scholars in the US and in Hungary (the joint volumes of the conferences, Szoboszlai, 1991, 1992) and that the Fulbright Foundation and other US-based foundations supported the development of Hungarian political science in many ways. Important in the Hungarian transitology discourse is the outstanding scholar, Attila Ágh (1998), who maintained US connections after the bilateral association meetings. He developed the Department of Political Science of the Budapest University of Economics and Public Administration into a kind of Hungarian Center of Democracy Studies with the support of the Fulbright Foundation and of other international foundations, which launched a series of conferences after 1989 on the issues of transitions, inviting the international transitology community and issuing a series of papers in a number of series of books in English and Hungarian.
[36] Some thematic orientations with methodological implications are mentioned below.
[37] Here the research focus is on works in the specific Hungarian liberal, nationalist, and conservative political intellectual traditions, which were suppressed by the communist system. After the communist regime, leftist and especially Marxist traditions are not very popular. Anarchism, feminism, and new social movement theories have some impact, but on the whole the "left" is left out of the "mainstream" of non-Marxist, non-leftist ideologies as subjects of research in Hungary (Lánczi, 2001/a). Mainstream activity in political theory is the translation, interpretation, and "reacquisition" of Western political philosophy after four decades of isolation.
[38] A theoretically important problem that has long challenged Hungarian thinkers is the composition of the political community, because the Hungarian ethnic community includes millions of Hungarians in Western emigration and in neighboring countries like Romania, Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia, Ukraine, Slovenia, and even Austria. This implies a strong affinity to the theoretical problem of the "nation"; the establishment, analysis, composition, and legitimacy of "political community"; and issues of "minority vs. majority", regionalism, autonomy, ethnic minorities, and multi-culturalism.
[39] Research highlights vary in this field according to the main problems of Hungarian democracy after 1989, which challenged political science in a fruitful manner. Major topics were:
[40] Theoretical approaches are rather eclectic. There is a mainstream, old-type constitutional institutionalism connected to the framework of human rights. Behaviorist approaches dominate electoral, public opinion, mass media, and party system research. There is a connection between old and new types of historical and contemporary approaches to institutionalism. New institutionalism is linked to rational choice theory in policy research, especially in the field of European integration. The practical reason for the pursuit of research on minority problems is mentioned above.
[41] The main orientation of Hungarian political science was institutionalist and theoretical, but, since 1989, there have been attempts to introduce more pragmatic, policy-oriented methodology and orientation. Among younger scholars, there is a shift from the earlier "German-style", legal-philosophical approach toward a more "American-style", economically oriented social science.
[42] Hungary is a small East-Central European (ECE) country that never had many direct overseas socio-cultural ties. Area studies are not really developed here. The main focus, of course, is on the welfare democracies, especially in Western Europe, and on EU accession. Thus, the Pacific, Asia, Africa, and Australia are not really integrated in political science research. The main focus is on the ECE area itself and on Europe as a "moving target" of EU accession. This limited focus characterizes both international and comparative approaches. Of course, there is teaching on international organizations in the form of international law and international relations studies. Special attention is paid to the issues of regionalism, minorities, and autonomy. Globalization studies are an upcoming, but rather weakly developed field in Hungarian political science. One of the reasons for its weakness is the dominance of "transitology interest", which overstresses self-reflectiveness in the post-communist countries. Inner-area comparison is also a rare product. Impending EU accession has increased interest in other ECE countries. But interest in neighboring countries with larger Hungarian minorities is stable. Issues of minority rights, territorial and personal autonomy, regional cooperation, and Europeanization as a process integrating semi-sovereign nation-states in a new political community are very popular subjects in Hungarian political science.
[43] A major in political science was first established at University of Miskolc in the Faculty of Letters/Philology in 1993. The curriculum was established by Béla Pokol (successors: István Balogh, Sándor Kovács, and at present László Kürti), who, at that time, was dean of the institute, but later left the faculty. The first diplomas were awarded in 1998. The second major was established in 1997 at the Budapest Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of State and Law, headed by Mihály Bihari (1985-1999) and continued by Máté Szabó. Its first main diploma output was in 2002. In 2001, the first university-based Political Science Department was established here; it offers MA and PhD courses and has the right to award the "habilitation". At the same university, ELTE in 1995, József Bayer established an MA program at the Faculty of Letters/Philology as well; his successor István Vida established another in 2001 at the new Faculty of Social Sciences. István Hülvely began a major program at the Faculty of Letters/Philology at the University of Debrecen in 1997. At the University of Pécs, a major program was opened in 1999 at the Faculty of Letters/Philology, headed by Márta Kunszt. At the Budapest University of Economics and Public Administration, the department led by Attila Ágh (1989-) organized a political science minor curriculum for students with another major in economics, international relations, or sociology. This type of secondary diploma teaching started early in 1986 at the ELTE Faculty of State and Law, headed by Mihály Bihari. There is a bigger department at the University of Szeged, headed by Péter Paczolay, and there are two departments at the University of Pécs (György Andrási, Faculty of Law; Márta Kunszt, Faculty of Letters). International relations are taught at the Budapest University of Economics and Public Administration in an institute separate from political science and headed by Zsolt Rostoványi. The first main diploma course in international relations started in 2000, before a combination of economics and international relations was instituted there.
[44] In 1991, István Stumpf established and has since headed the Századvég-Budapest School of Politics, a private school training politicians and oriented toward improving practical skills; later it combined forces with the Budapest University of Economics and Public Administration Political Science Department.
[45] PhD courses in political science are taught at the ELTE Faculty of State and Law, the Budapest University of Economics and Public Administration (BUESPA), and the University of Miskolc. There are 15-20 PhD students per semester in international relations and in political science. A growing number of young Hungarian social scientists are completing their PhDs abroad, especially in the U.S. or in Western Europe.
[46] Habilitation in political science is currently only possible at the Eötvös Loránd University’s Faculty of State and Law and at the Budapest University of Economics and Public Administration. About ten habilitations in political science were completed by January 1, 2001. Only the Academy of Sciences is also entitled to grant a "Dr. sc." qualification, which allows doctors to apply for a professorship at a university. At the moment, there are about 10-12 professors of political science in Hungary. Some of them got their qualification in other disciplines (law, philosophy, history), some of them qualify as a Dr. sc. from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and some of them qualified by ELTE’s Faculty of Law "habilitation".
[47] In Hungary, there are plenty of colleges (főiskola); their differences from the universities are great. There are no proper political science departments at the colleges. Rather, there are integrated departments for social science; these teach sociology, psychology, history, economics, and international relations to students who do not have any qualifications in these fields yet, and there are too many students of low or doubtful quality. Thus, after 1989, accreditation regulations were developed to qualify for "university" and "college" status. Attempts were and are made to integrate some of the colleges in local or regional universities. This process is far from finished.
[48] In localities like Pécs, Szeged, Debrecen, Győr, and Miskolc, where universities do exist, local and regional colleges are conceived as parts of a "local higher education network". This does not exclude the parallel existence of university and college political science departments. Budapest has a special status. There has never been an integrated University of Budapest. Thus, it is almost impossible to establish one, although management and finances almost require it. There have been many attempts to organize it, but all failed. So, the Ministry of Education accepted some of Budapest’s local higher education networks or alliances in 1999, but no overall integration has been achieved. Cooperation in higher education in Budapest does not include theCentral European University (CEU), which is an international institution acting in Hungary according to its own rules, finances, and policy. This means that there are parallel departments of political science in Budapest (CEU, ELTE, Budapest University of Economics and Public Administration, private universities).
[49] In Hungary, research is still a domain of independent research institutes, while universities are mainly for teaching. There have been attempts to reintegrate research and teaching in post-communism, but without real success. The Hungarian Academy of Sciences supervises and finances the Institute of Political Science. The Institute has prestige among the research institutes of the HAS; evaluations rank it quite highly. The Institute of Foreign Affairs (Magyar Külügyi Intézet) and Institute of Regional Studies were organized in 1992, independently from the Academy, in the László Teleki Foundation. They have some functions in advising the government in foreign policy affairs. There is a private institute for "Research on the 1956 Revolution"; it functions partly as an institute for contemporary history, publishing a vast amount of archive materials on and analyses of the revolution and its consequences. The 20th and 21st Century Institutes, supported by the Viktor Orbán government (1998-2002), also focus on contemporary history, political science, and policy analysis, and they support various political science projects as well as conferences.
[50] Political science research is financed mainly by the government and the Academy. Some political parties have their own small research groups or units. Most research funding is distributed competitively. There are some research funds available for Hungarian political scientists from the Soros Open Society Foundation. Western governments, the European Union (European Union), the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) launched various research support programs for democratization research, providing political scientists with financial support. "Korridor", a private research institute established by Csaba Gombár and László Lengyel, conducts political analysis and consultation for and on government and policy processes. The Századvég-Budapest School of Politics is connected to the political education center of the same name, and there are some public opinion research centers as nongovernmental institutions (TÁRKI, Szonda-Ipsos, Medián).
[51] The sole foreign private university that has some importance in the area of political science is the Central European University established by George Soros. János Kis, a leading figure of the liberally minded dissent in Hungary in the Kádár era, established its political science department in Budapest in 1992. Later, Departments for International Relations and for European Studies were established. The Central European University is registered in the U.S. and recruits professors from the U.S., Western Europe, and even Eastern European countries. The staff of the Political Science Department also includes some Hungarian citizens. Students come from all over the world, and the courses are in English. The guiding idea of the CEU was to educate or re-educate a new elite in post-communist countries, based on the idea of an open society, spreading liberal values, and using the methodology of the U.S.-dominated, Western social sciences. In 2001, when the institute had its 10th anniversary, new goals and organizational forms for the further development were declared. Originally, CEU activities were oriented toward awarding a second diploma to people who already earned a university or college degree in their respective countries. There are more and more PhD programs in both political science and in international relations/European studies.
[52] In 2001-2002, three new private educational institutions were opened: the King Sigmundus University, the College of Communication, and the Gyula Andrássy German-language University. They are located in Budapest, do some work political science, and are oriented toward journalism, international relations, and European studies.
[53] Before 1989, political science existed solely in oral debates, mainly in the Hungarian Political Association and its sections, without any written publication or documentation. Later, the Association produced its yearbooks, which documented these debates. The Yearbook of the Hungarian Political Science Association series of the HPSA was the sole national periodical (Magyar Politikatudományi Társaság Évkönyve 1983-1992, 11 volumes). The yearbooks were thematically oriented, but basically all subjects discussed in the HPSA were welcome. There was documentation of the most interesting discussions, but studies were also published without oral discussion. It had a wide circulation, and most of the bigger libraries bought it. Members of the HPSA, at that time between 400-500, received a copy; and it was sold in social science bookshops. Its editor was the general secretary of HPSA, György Szoboszlai.
[54] After 1989, with the publication of the two English volumes of the Association’s Yearbook, the series finished with its 11 volumes (1984-1991), and from 1992 to the present, the Institute of the Political Science of the Academy of Sciences (HAS) and the Association jointly published the Hungarian-language Political Science Review (Politikatudományi Szemle), which is not the only, but the main organ of political science debate.
[55] These institutional dynamics - first the Association as a vital and central point of discussion, then its transformation and the pioneering role of the Review - can be viewed in historical perspective. The Hungarian Political Science Association (HPSA) was established in 1982 as a forum for softliner communists, for social scientists interested in politics, and for some of the unofficial thinkers. Before 1989, the Hungarian Political Science Association was the only focus for national and of international cooperation among political science-oriented social scientists. Luckily, after 1989, it lost its former monopoly as a wide range of recently established institutions of research and teaching thrived and pursued cooperation policies within and outside Hungary. The role and function of the HPSA changed under the new conditions after 1989. Local and institutional positions of political science became stronger, and the association is no longer the only place to meet and publish.
[56] International relations studies established their own association in 1992, The Association for Foreign Affairs of Hungary (Magyar Külügyi Társaság). After 1989, the Hungarian Political Science Association policy has been to stress the professional character of the discipline. In 1992, the HPSA and the jointly launched the Political Science Review, a quarterly with peer review. This is the first and only professional political science journal in the Hungarian language. Every year since it was established, the HPSA has organized an annual meeting in Budapest on a special topic. Every year since 1995, there has been one meeting with a local group outside Budapest in one of the bigger towns.
[57] Since the 1994 meeting in Austria, every year there has been a Central European meeting, too, a regional cooperation meeting of Central European Political Science Associations. The second meeting, in 1995, was organized in Budapest, Hungary; a Hungarian group has participated in every meeting since (1996 Slovenia, 1998 Croatia, 1999 Slovakia, 2000 Poland, 2001 Vienna). In 2000, the associations of the cooperating countries established the Central European Political Science Association as a regional unit within the International Political Science Association. Jerzy Wiatr from Poland was elected the first president and József Bayer of Hungary a vice-president. The association publishes a journal in English (2000-) called Central European Political Science Review. Its editorial office is in Budapest, and János Simon is the editor.
[58] In 1993, in cooperation with the István Bibó Foundation, the Hungarian Political Science Association established a prize for the most outstanding political scientist of the year, the István Bibó Prize.. István Bibó played an important role in the 1956 revolution, was sentenced to prison, and was never allowed to re-enter scientific and public life. So far, the prize has been awarded to the following scholars: Csaba Gombár, Péter Schmidt, Mihály Bihari, István Schlett, Attila Ágh, József Bayer, András Körösényi, Erzsébet Szalai, and Kálmán Kulcsár. Since 1998, József Bayer, Director of the Institute of Political Science (HAS) of HAS, has been President of the Hungarian Political Science Association. From 1998-2000, the General Secretary was Tibor Navracsis, ELTE University, Faculty of State and Law; since 2001, it has been Gábor Török, Department of Political Science of Budapest University of Economics and Public Administration.
[59] The Review is not the only publication in political science in Hungary. We have a differentiated group of periodicals and series of books on political science and materials related to policy analysis.
[60] In 1988, the Budapest University of Economics and Public Administration Department of Political Science began publishing The Yearbooks of Hungarian Politics, which are edited by a board consisting of Sándor Kurtán, Péter Sándor, and László Vass. The Yearbook of Hungarian Politics tries to focus on the events in the respective year. Their documentation, analysis, surveys, texts, and facts, plus scholarly essays, studies, and politicians’ writings, provide an impressive "testament" of a year of Hungarian politics. The large volumes are now published with the support of universities, the state, political and other foundations, and business. They are available by subscription and can be purchased in bookshops (Magyarország Politikai Évkönyve, volumes every year from 1988 on; a special issue on the first ten years was published in 1998).
[61] Supported by the Institute of Political Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Hungarian Political Science Association, an editorial board with changing composition issued the Political ScienceReview as the first (and still only) political science journal in Hungary (Politikatudományi Szemle, two issues in 1992; four issues each in the 1993-1999 volumes; two issues in the 2000 volume; four each year from 2001 on). The founding editors were András Bozóki (ELTE/CEU), Márton Szabó (Institute of Political Science), and Máté Szabó (ELTE University, Faculty of Law, Department of Political Science). Chief of the board was Csaba Gombár, succeeded by Péter (Pierre) Kende, a repatriated former émigré. The current editorial board consists of Tamás Fricz (IPS), Ervin Csizmadia (IPS), Sándor Kurtán (BSE), and András Lánczi (BSE). The journal publishes studies, information, debates, book reviews, and translations.
[62] Foreign Affairs (Külpolitika), covering international politics, has been published by the Institute of Foreign Affairs for a long time. It began a new series in 2000. There are many other journals publishing social science articles, including political science and related fields, e.g. Századvég (End of Century), Múltunk (Our Past), Valóság (Reality), Kritika (Critique), and Mozgó Világ (World in Motion). The proceedings of the annual meetings of the Hungarian Political Science Association since 1995 have been published by the organizing faculties (Szeged, Pécs, Miskolc, Székesfehérvár and Nyíregyháza). Needless to say, all larger departments try to have their own book series, such as the Budapest University of Economics and Public Administration, the ELTE Faculty of Law, and Századvég-Budapest School of Politics , which also launched a social science journal Századvég: új folyam in 1996. The historically oriented research institutes have plenty of archive and interpretive publications, such as Múltunk, the journal of the Institute for Political History. There are many publications, yearbooks, and various series of the Institute of History of the 1956 Revolution.
[63] The substantial issues of the debates in Hungarian political science are not particularly methodological. On the other hand, Hungarian political science is quite self-reflective, being keen to establish the discipline’s contours and borders against related disciplines and to delineate what political science is about. The character and the institutional boundaries of the respective programs determine what related disciplines are involved in teaching and research. Generally, political science is seldom combined with sociology, for reasons based in the differing development of the two disciplines in Hungary. Sociology was established under communism in Hungary and wanted to avoid the "dangers" of studying politics under authoritarian rule. Political science was fully established after 1989 in the middle of the democratic transition, when sociology was already a "closed", institutionally matured, and established discipline. As a rule, sociologists have a good methodological background. Political science, in contrast, has less empirical sophistication, tends to verbosity, and combines dreams and reality under the eyes of the already "complacent" sociologists.
[64] Political science in Hungary was institutionalized as a new discipline at the time of regime change, when Western aid and support was rather open to the demands of a new discipline in a new democracy. This means that various Western governments and Western-based programs provided helped to build up the new discipline, including financing new computer systems, developing data bases, teaching computer skills, and networking. The Central European University publishes the most in English, followed by the Budapest University of Economics and Public Administration Political Science Department and then the Institute of Political Science (HAS) of the HAS and the "Savaria University Press" of Szombathely. Important were the English-language volumes of the aforementioned Hungarian Center for Democracy Studies of the BSE on the first parliaments, as were those of the Institute of Political Science (HAS) of HAS on organized interests and those of the "Korridor" Institute on the first Hungarian government.
[65] In some courses before 1989, a kind of "socialist" political science or political sociology was taught based on the Hungarian translation of a political sociology manual written by a Polish sociologist and political scientist, Jerzy Wiatr (1980), which tried to implement Western categories in Marxist-Leninist terms, i.e., using some Marxist phraseology, but basically importing the concepts of Western social sciences, or on the political sociology manual of Hungarian law, political science, and sociology by Kálmán Kulcsár (1987).
[66] The manuals, comprehensive introductory volumes on political science in the Hungarian language, were as follows. The only manual of political science in the Hungarian language was long the joint effort of Mihály Bihari and Béla Pokol, of the Department of ELTE Faculty of State and Law. It was first issued in 1992, is now in its 9th edition with more than 8,000 copies sold, and is still one of the most widely used manual (Bihari-Pokol, 1992-2000). It has a heavy German-oriented theoretical, institutional approach and almost no empirical orientation. It is written for students with some legal background and includes no problems of international politics at all. To provide a basic political education, a collection of essays "What is politics?" was published in 1994, supported by the centrist liberal-conservative party FIDESZ (Gyurgyák, 1994). With similar goals, a collective reference work, "Good Citizen", was published in Debrecen in 1996 (Civitas, 1996). A collection of texts of contemporary political philosophy and political science has been used at the Szeged University and elsewhere since 1995 (Kovács, 1995). The Bihari-Pokol volume’s long-lasting monopoly was broken in 1996 by another duo of authors, Katalin Haskó and István Hülvely, who designed their much shorter manual with a background in history and philosophy for the new political science program in Debrecen and faculties other than law (Haskó-Hülvely, 1996; 2000). A second revised edition was released in 2000, and about 3,000 copies have been sold. This manual is also a type of reference work, systematically using short definitions. It is an introduction to theories and institutional patterns of modern democracy and does not include empirically oriented methodology instruction. Of its nine chapters, only one shorter chapter focuses on international politics. Important Western reference works were translated into Hungarian, for example the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought. Gergely András, József Bayer, and Kálmán Kulcsár (1999) have edited a collective Hungarian-language reference collection of studies of the most relevant research fields in political science.
[67] The third widely used manual, by József Bayer and published in 1999, treats issues and problems of both political science and international politics. It is based on a systematic analytical differentiation between politics, policy, and polity, following U.S. models. Bayer also published an introduction to the history of political theory (Bayer, 1998). Already in 1996, Péter Paczolay and Máté Szabó attempted to deal with the history of ideas and political theories, with an emphasis on the emergence of the American science of politics. There are publications by András Lánczi (2000, 2001) and Ferenc Huoranszki (1999) available in Hungarian on the past and present of political philosophy. István Schlett (1996, 1999) treats Hungarian political thinking in a still-continuing series of volumes written in the vein of a German-oriented history of ideas. There are various series of area- or issue-specific manuals, like the one from Osiris publishing house, translating standards by Lipset, Almond-Verba, Dahl, etc. and publishing some Hungarians authors, too.
[68] The biggest faculty in Hungary, the Department of Political Science of the ELTE Faculty of State and Law, issued its own manuals with Osiris and Korona publishers, but since 1999, mainly the faculty’s own publisher Rejtjel has issued its textbooks and manuals (about 16 volumes so far). The most fruitful series of political science books, partly manuals and textbooks, is the political science series published by the foundation Villányi úti konferenciaközpont alapítvány and edited by János Simon, a researcher of the Institute of Political Science of the Hungarian Academy of Science since 1996. This series has 2 volumes, including the Haskó-Hülvely manual.
[69] A variety of databases are available. Research related to political science is done in public opinion poll institutes. The abovementioned Yearbook of Hungarian Politics publishes some of the most relevant material for political scientists, among them Media, Szonda-Ipsos, Gallup, TÁRKI , Marketing, and Modus. More historically oriented databases, including on historical electoral results, party statutes, and oral history materials, are found at the Institute of Political History, the 1956 Institute, and the Open Society Archives of the Central European University. Various institutions produce historical and contemporary databases on the work of the Hungarian Parliament, like the Jelenkutató Alapítvány or the Parlamenti Iroda. The party-based foundations finance the publication of the Yearbook of Hungarian Politics, which tries to be open toward all political directions and to involve experts who are able to collect reliable data on Hungarian politics. The goal of the yearbook is to refer to all relevant databases and to deliver current political analyses.
[70] America is a high-ranking target in international exchange and communication for young Hungarian and East Central European scholars. PhD programs in the USA and other university programs and centers of civic or other types of adult education, such as the UK-based Open University, are present in Hungary. The European Community-centered political and cultural orientation of young Hungarians is again supportive of English-speaking scholars.
[71] Among Western European organizations, the European Consortium for Political Research has four Hungarian member organizations at present: the TÁRKI, a social science research institute; the Central European University Department of Political Science;Department of Political Science of the Budapest University of Economics and Public Administration; and the ELTE Faculty of State and Law, Department of Political Science. The recently emerging Thematic Network, a European political Science Network organized in France in 2001, has a growing number of cooperation partners and dues-paying members in Hungary. The is an member organization and participates in the European and Central European regional and sub-regional networks of national political science associations.
[72] Another US-centered pillar of assistance in reconstructing Hungary’s social sciences is private and corporate donors who work through and with NGOs to establish institutions alternative to the government-based official education and research in the post-communist, East-Central European countries. One of the most famous of these institutions is the network and system of the Soros Foundation, the network of research support in the Open Society Institute and the Central European University. The first ten years after 1989 in Hungary and the region saw a boom of especially US-based aid and restructuring programs for social sciences, especially for political science. There is also a network and subsidy system based on EU funds, governments, academies, foundations, and private donors. The same pattern is to be observed in the case of the Collegium Budapest, a center for advanced study located in Budapest, which also focuses also on social sciences and political science research cooperation (Heinrich, 1999), and at a similar institution, the Vienna-based Institute for Human Sciences, which focuses on the post-communist region and has vibrant contacts with social scientists, including political scientists, in Hungary.
